Bel Canto(56)

“You stay so busy,” Fyodorov said. “I envy you at times. We watch you, up and down, up and down, everyone needing your attention. No doubt you envy us doing nothing. You would like a little more time to yourself, yes? Time to look out the window?” What the Russian was saying was that he was sorry to be another bother, another sentence in need of conversion, and that he wouldn’t ask were it not important.

Gen smiled. Fyodorov had given up the pleasantries of shaving and in a little more than two weeks had come up with an impressive beard. By the time they were sprung from this place he would look like Tolstoy. “I have plenty of time even when I’m busy. You know yourself these are the longest days in history. Look, I gave up my watch. I thought I was better off not knowing.”

“That I admire,” the Russian said, staring at Gen’s bare wrist. He tapped the skin with one heavy forefinger. “That shows real thinking.”

“So don’t think you’re taking up my time.”

Fyodorov took off his own watch and dropped it into his pocket in a gesture of solidarity. He circled his great hand to enjoy the new freedom. “Now we can talk. Now that we have done away with time.”

“Absolutely,” Gen said, but as soon as he said it, two figures walked near the wall of the garden holding up guns. Their jackets and caps were wet from the earlier rain and they kept their heads down instead of looking around the way Gen imagined they should if they were supposed to be watching for something. It was hard to tell which one was Carmen. From so far away in the rain she was a boy again. He hoped that she would look up and see him, that she might think that he was watching for her even though he recognized the idiocy of this. Still, he had been waiting to see her and he felt better somehow, assuming it was her in the first place and not just another angry teenaged boy.

Fyodorov watched Gen and watched the two figures outside the window until they had passed. “You keep an eye on them,” he said in a low voice. “That’s smart thinking. I get lazy. In the beginning, I kept account of them, but they are everywhere. Like rabbits. I think they bring in more of them at night.”

Gen wanted to point and say, That’s Carmen, but he didn’t know what he would be explaining. Instead he nodded in agreement.

“But let’s not waste our time on them. I have better ways to waste your time. Do you smoke?” he asked, pulling out a small blue package of French cigarettes. “No? Do you mind?”

It seemed that no sooner had he struck his match than the Vice President arrived with an ashtray that he placed on a small table in front of them. “Gen,” he said, nodding politely. “Victor.” He bowed to them, a pleasantry he had picked up from the Japanese, and then moved on, not wanting to interrupt the conversation he could not understand.

“A wonderful man, Ruben Iglesias. It almost makes me wish I was a citizen of this wretched country so that I could vote for him for President.” Fyodorov pulled the smoke through the cigarette and then expelled it slowly. He was trying to find the right way to begin his request. “You can imagine, we have been thinking a great deal about opera,” he said.

“Of course,” Gen said.

“Who knew that life could be so unexpected? I thought we would be dead by now, or if not dead then regularly begging for our lives, but instead I sit and I consider opera.”

“No one could have predicted.” Gen leaned forward imperceptibly to see if he could catch sight of Carmen before she passed completely from view, but he was too late.

“I have always been very interested in music. Opera in Russia is very important. You know that. It is virtually a sacred thing.”

“I can imagine.” Now he wished he had his watch. If he did he would be able to time her, to see how many minutes it took for her to go past the window again. She could become her own sort of clock. He thought about asking Fyodorov but clearly Fyodorov had his mind on other things.

“Opera came to Russia late. In Italy the language lent itself to this kind of singing but for us it took longer. It is, you know, a complicated language. The singers we have now in Russia are very great. I have no complaints about the talent our country possesses, but as I live now there is only one true genius. Many great singers, brilliant voices, but only one genius. She has never been to Russia that I know of. Wouldn’t you say the chances of finding oneself trapped in a house with true genius are remarkably small?”

“I would agree,” Gen said.

“To find myself here with her and to be unable to say anything it is, well, unfortunate. No, honestly, it is frustrating. What if we were released tomorrow? That is what I pray for and yet, wouldn’t I say to myself for the rest of my life, you never spoke to her? She was right there in the room with you and you didn’t bother to make arrangements to say something? What would it mean to live with such regret? I suppose it didn’t bother me much before she resumed her singing. I was preoccupied with my own thoughts, the circumstances at hand, but now with the music coming so regularly everything has changed. Don’t you find that to be true?”

And Gen had to agree. He hadn’t thought about it in exactly those terms before but it was true. There was some difference.

“And what are the chances, given that I am a hostage in a country I do not know with a woman I so sincerely admire that there would also be a man such as yourself who has a good heart and speaks both my language and hers? Tell me what the chances are? They are in the millions! This is, of course, why I have come to you. I am interested in engaging your services of translation.”